Motor and Rotor in One: Light-Active ZnO/Au Twinned Rods of Tunable Motion Modes

Sinan Du¹, Huaguang Wang², Chao Zho⁴, Wei Wang^4*（王威）, and Zexin Zhang^3*（张泽新）

¹ Center for Soft Condensed Matter Physics and Interdisciplinary Research and College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China

²College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China

³ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Center for Soft Condensed Matter Physics and Interdisciplinary Research, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China

⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen 518055, China

J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2020, 142, 5, 2213--2217

Precise control of the motion of micromachines is the key to achieving their functions for practical applications. The main challenge is that a given micromachine can typically exhibit only one motion mode, i.e., translation or rotation, while having multiple modes of motion resulting from a simple actuation is still rare. Here we designed and synthesized photochemically powered zinc oxide/gold (ZnO/Au) rods that exhibit multiple motion modes. Under homogeneous UV irradiation, these ZnO/Au rods undergo a transition from ballistic motion to persistent rotational motion upon increasing the fuel concentration or the light intensity. In addition, the rods can switch modes from a circular motion to a helical motion and then a straight-line motion by tuning the angle of incident light. We envision that such attractive colloidal micromachines with controllable motions hold considerable promise for diverse practical applications.

链接：https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.9b13093